Paris: The Novel

linked her arm in his. It was just a friendly gesture.
    Marie was standing just beside one of the entrances to the ring that went into a tunnel under the stands. She supposed that the gladiators, and the sacrificial victims, passed through this way. She thought she could imagine how they felt. She glanced at Frank and Claire. Frank was looking across the ring the other way, but Claire was looking straight at her. And there could be no mistaking the little smile of triumph in her eye.
    You want him, it said, but I have taken him from you, and now he is mine.
    Then her daughter turned away.

    It was a long time since Marie had been in the Jardin des Plantes herself, and she had almost forgotten how magnificent it was.
    “The place was started by the king’s doctors, back in the days of the Three Musketeers,” Marc told them. “Then the Sun King brought in a team of the world’s finest botanists, and they expanded it. And now …”
    The sky was clear. The sun was still quite high, and if not quite so warm as at Fontainebleau, two weeks before, it was only the first tinges of yellow in the leaves of some of the trees that warned of autumn approaching.
    They toured the long alleys, they admired the great cedar of Lebanon, brought from Kew Gardens in London, and looked at the little royal zoo, taken from Versailles after the Revolution. They visited the charming little Mexican hothouse. Marc and the two young people were clearly enjoying themselves. Marie smiled pleasantly.
    But she scarcely saw what they were looking at.
    Of course, she thought, how foolish she had been. What was her sudden passion for young Frank—an attempt to re-create a lost time with his father? Yes. An attempt to rekindle something in herself that she had not expected to feel again? That too. Was it normal? She didn’t know. Was it absurd? No doubt.
    She’d had her time. Indeed, she’d been lucky. James Fox had been a good husband. It was her daughter’s turn for love now. Claire might be lucky or unlucky. That was for the Fates to decide. But young Frank belonged to Claire. And I am in danger, she realized, of making a fool of myself.
    She glanced up at the sun. It was warm, but it was bright. No doubt it was picking out, stenciling, every wrinkle on her face. How harsh the sun was, how terrible.
    And suddenly she was overwhelmed by a feeling of desolation, as if life had passed her by and, long before she was ready—for she was ready, never more so than now—fate and that terrible sun had sentenced her to exile. To a barren waste, and autumn cold, and emptiness.
    They walked into the circular maze on its little hill. The winding path and the clipped hedges seemed like a prison to her.
    Then Marc led them to the centerpiece of the Jardin, the vast exhibition hall of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution. They paused outside for a few moments, gazing down the long grass esplanade in front of it.
    She stared, but hardly noticed that Frank was standing by her side.
    “By the way,” he said, “I forgot to mention that I had a letter from my father yesterday. He told me to give you his best wishes.”
    She nodded, and managed a smile.
    “Please return mine to him, when you next write,” she said.
    “Actually, you’ll be able to give them in person,” Frank continued. “His letter says he’s coming to London next month. Unfortunately my mother isn’t able to accompany him, which is a shame. But after that, he’s coming to see me in Paris. I think he may stay here awhile.”
    “Your father is coming to Paris?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh,” said Marie.

    As Louise approached the office of Monsieur Chabert the lawyer again, she wondered what he had found. She’d gone to him the very next day after the incident with Blanchard.
    Luc hadn’t been too pleased about her walking out on a customer. He’d come straight around to her place that night.
    “Are you all right? I got a call to say you walked out.”
    “I felt a little dizzy.”
    “Did he do something bad to you? Was there something you didn’t want to do?”
    “Nothing like that.”
    “So are you sick? He liked you. He was worried about you.”
    “I can’t see him.”
    Luc went very quiet.
    “You can’t act like that,” he said. “You have to tell me why.”
    “I can’t, Luc. But it won’t happen again.”
    He didn’t reply for a moment. He seemed to be considering something.
    “Make sure it doesn’t,” he growled finally. “I couldn’t tolerate that.”
    She